Dictionary of Literary Terms - PDF

Dictionary of Literary Terms 3
S E C T I O N O N E : A – C
Dictionary of Literary
Terms
(the) Absurd - an avant-garde style in which structure, plot, and
characterization are disregarded or garbled in order to stress
the lack of logic in nature and man’s isolation in a universe
which has no meaning or value.
The term is derived from the Latin absurdus, formed from ab
and surdus, meaning “deaf” and “stupid”. Albert Camus used the
word in discussing his concept of existentialism, the philosophy
that the individual is responsible for whatever decisions (s)he
makes according to the doctrine of free will, but that (s)he makes
those decisions without knowing what is right or wrong, as dem-
onstrated in his novel, The Stranger. In this novel, the protagonist,
Meursault, commits a murder without seeming to realize either the
seriousness or the consequences of such an act; there was neither
an evaluation of the act before it was committed nor remorse for
having done “wrong” after the fact. Living this way was considered
absurd or senseless, illogical, and contrary to common sense.
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is an example of an absurdist
short story, in which a man wakes one day having been myste-
riously transformed into an insect. The term is usually used to
indicate the Theater of the Absurd, a phrase invented by Martin
Esslin in 1961 to refer to the plays of such 1950s dramatists as
Eugéne Ionesco, Edward Albee, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, and
Samuel Beckett.
Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) - means the study of the emo-
tions and the mind in relation to their sense of beauty in lit-
erature and other ﬁne arts, but separately from moral, social,
political, practical, or economic considerations. This area of
study is concerned with the appreciation and criticism of what
is considered beautiful or ugly. It is sometimes referred to as
“art for art’s sake.”
The word comes from the Greek aisthetikos, meaning “percep-
tive,” and was derived from aisthanesthai, which means “to feel”
or “to perceive.”
The term was introduced in 1753 by the German philosopher
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarent, but the study of the nature of
beauty had been pursued for centuries, certainly since the time
of Plato. The later Nineteenth Century saw the blossoming of the
aesthetic movement in England. In the conclusion to The Renais-
sance (1873), a seminal work in the articulation of aesthetic theory,
Walter Pater writes, “For art comes to you proposing frankly to give
nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and
simply for those moments’ sake.” Other major proponents of the
aesthetic included John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde.
Affective fallacy - the error of judging a literary work by its emo-
tional effect upon readers or a confusion between the work
itself and its results.
The term comes from combining two words: affective, which
means pertaining to emotional effects or natures, and fallacy, which
means false or mistaken idea.
Affect was a Middle English word taken from the Middle French
affaire, meaning “to inﬂuence;” affaire was derived from the Latin
afﬁcere, which was formed by joining ab and facere, meaning “to
do.” Fallacy is from the Latin fallacia, which was derived from
fallac- or fallax, meaning “deceitful.” These terms were originally
from fallere, meaning “to deceive.”
In essence, avoidance of the affective fallacy demonstrates
an attempt to create objective literary criticism, in which the
critic is concerned with describing the rhetorical composition of a
work— how it functions — rather than with describing the impact
of a work — what it does — on the reader.
see: catharsis
Allegory - an extended metaphor in which a person, abstract idea,
or event stands for itself and for something else. It usually in-
volves moral or spiritual concepts which are more signiﬁcant
than the actual narrative.
The term is from the Greek allegoria, a joining of two other
Greek words: allos, meaning “other”, and agoreuein, meaning “to
speak.”
The most famous allegory in English is Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678) which describes the adventures of the human
soul as if it were on a journey. Parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy
(1310–1314) are also allegorical. George Orwell’s Animal Farm
(1946) is a political allegory in which the story of the revolution
of the animals on an English farm stands as a critique of both the
capitalist democracies of the west and the totalitarian regime that
had grown out of the communist revolution in Russia.
see: fable, morality play, myth, parable, satire
Alliteration (sometimes called initial rhyme) - common in poetry
and occasionally in prose, this is the repetition of an initial
sound in two or more words of a phrase, line, or sentence. It is
usually a consonant and marks the stressed syllables in a line
of poetry or prose. Alliteration may be considered ornamental
or as a decoration which appeals to the sense of hearing.
The word comes from the Latin ad literam, which means “ac-
cording to the letter.”
This device was consistently used in Old English poetry, but
fell out of favor in the Middle Ages. Now it is used to emphasize
meaning and is especially effective in oratory. It is characteristic
of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as in Beowulf, and is still used by modern
poets in nonsense verse, tongue twisters, and jingles.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare makes satiri-
cal use of alliteration in order to demonstrate the artisan-acting
troupe’s lack of poetic skill. In the play within the play, Pyramus
and Thisbe, Quince says as prologue:
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.
Act V, scene i : lines 155 – 156
Allusion - a reference, usually brief, often casual, occasionally in-
direct, to a person , event, or condition thought to be familiar
(but sometimes actually obscure or unknown) to the reader.
This holds true especially for the characters and events of my-
thology, legends, and history. Association is an essential part of
allusion. The purpose of allusion is to bring a world of experi-
ence outside the limitations of a statement to the reader.
The term comes from Latin alludere, which means “to play
with,” “jest,” or “refer to.”
John Milton uses allusion in Paradise Lost:
...; and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther’s son
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or inﬁdel
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damask, or Marocco, or Trebisond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia.
Book 1 : lines 479 – 587
In The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock seeks to compli-
ment Portia for her agreeing that Bassanio must keep his bargain,
Shakespeare has Shylock use the biblical allusion:
A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel.
Act IV, scene i : line 221
Ambiguity - a doubtfulness or uncertainty about the intention or
meaning of something. It usually refers to a statement that
is subject to more than one interpretation. The term is used
for words that suggest two or more appropriate meanings or
that convey both a basic meaning and complex overtones of
that meaning. Sometimes, authors make deliberate choices of
words that simultaneously cause several different streams of
thought in the reader’s mind. Ambiguity is also used to mean
confusion between the denotation and connotation of a literary
work. A simple kind of ambiguity is the use of homophones to
promote a multiplicity of possible meanings. In Sonnet 135,
Shakespeare puns on the word “Will,” invoking its sense as
one’s wish, as well as its sense as a nickname for “William”:
“whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will” (line 1).
The word is derived from the Latin ambiguus, which means
“doubtful,” and was formed from ambigere—a combination of amb,
meaning “both ways,” and agere, meaning “drive.”
see: allusion, connotation
Anachronism - an error in chronology, or placing an event, person,
item, or language expression in the wrong period.
The term is originally from the Greek anakhronismos formed
by combining ana, which means “back or backwards,” and khronos,
which means “time.”
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, an anachronism is used:
Brutus: Peace! count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three.
Act II, scene i : lines 193 – 194
There were no clocks during Roman times, and the striking
clock was not invented until 1,400 years after Caesar’s death.
Contemporary theater often uses anachronisms, such as when
one of Shakespeare’s plays is performed in modern-day clothing.
Analogy - the relationship of similarity between two or more enti-
ties or a partial similarity on which a comparison is based. An
example is the classic analogy between the heart and a pump.
In argumentation and persuasion, analogy is often used as a
form of reasoning in which one thing is compared to or con-
trasted with another in certain respects, based on the known
similarity or dissimilarity in other respects. Analogy is often
used to paint vivid word pictures.
The term comes from the Greek analogia, meaning “propor-
tion.”
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift describes the societies of
the Lilliputians and the Brobdingrags in such a way as to make their
characteristics and weaknesses analogous to human society.
see: metaphor, simile
Antagonist - the character who strives against another main
character. This character opposes the hero or protagonist in
drama. The term is also used to describe one who contends
with or opposes another in a ﬁght, conﬂict, or battle of wills.
In literature, this is the principal opponent or foil of the main
character and is considered the villain unless the protagonist
is a villain; in that case, the antagonist is the hero.
The word is derived from the Greek antagonistes, which means
“rival” and was formed from the combining of anti, meaning
“against,” and agon, meaning a “contest.”
Shakespeare’s plays provide apt examples of antagonists:
his Macduff in Macbeth is an antagonist and the hero, since the
protagonist—Macbeth—is a villain; Laertes and Claudius are
the antagonists of Hamlet in the play of the same name; Iago is
Othello’s antagonist in Othello. Also, the antagonist does not have
to be another person. In Jack London’s story “To Build a Fire,” the
antagonist is the bitterly cold weather.
see: protagonist
Anticlimax - a drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a digni-
ﬁed or important idea or situation to a trivial one or a descent
from something sublime to something ridiculous. In ﬁction
and drama, this refers to action which is disappointing in
contrast to the previous moment of intense interest or any-
thing which follows the climax. The effect may be comic and
is often intended to be. According to Samuel Johnson, who
ﬁrst recorded the word, it is “A sentence in which the last part
expresses something lower than the ﬁrst.”
The term comes from the combination of two Greek words:
anti, which means “against” or “the reverse of,” and klimax,
which means “a ladder” and was derived from klinein meaning
“to slope.”
An example of an anticlimax is when the indigent protagonist
ﬁnds a great amount of money for which (s)he has been intently
searching and does nothing with it.
see: climax
Antithesis - contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence. It is
the juxtaposition of two words, phrases, clauses, or sentences
contrasted or opposed in meaning in such a way as to give
emphasis to their contrasting ideas and give the effect of bal-
ance. This is a device often used in rhetoric.
The word comes from the Greek anti, meaning “against,” and
tithenai, which means “to place” or “to set against.”
In Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), Adam and Eve are described
using antitheses:
For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.
Book V, lines 297 – 299
see: epigram, ﬁgure of speech, oxymoron
Aphorism - a brief, pithy, usually concise statement or observa-
tion of a doctrine, principle, truth, or sentiment. Aphorisms
are usually not anonymous.
The word comes from the Greek aphorizein, which means
“to mark off by boundaries” and was formed by combining apo,
meaning “from,” and horos, meaning “a limit.” The term was ﬁrst
used by Hippocrates.
An example of an aphorism is Benjamin Franklin’s
Early to bed
and early to rise,
makes a man
healthy, wealthy, and wise.
see: epigram, proverb
Apocalyptic - connected with revelation. The term is also used to
describe literature that provides a prophecy or revelation. In
contemporary usage, this refers to any literary selection that
reveals and predicts the future. Usually, the term is used to
refer to the coming of the end of the world and the expected
ﬁnal battle between good and evil.
The word is from the Greek apokalupsis, which means “un-
veiling,” and was originally derived from kaluptein, meaning “to
cover.”
It is used as the title of the last book in The New Testament of
the Bible: The Apocalypse or the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
The ﬁnal two books of Paradise Lost are apocalyptic, as the arch-
angel Michael shows Adam how human history will climax in the
ﬁnal judgement of God.
Apology - a defense and justiﬁcation for some belief, doctrine,
piece of writing, cause, or action without any admission of
blame with which we contemporarily associate the word. In the
Eighteenth Century, the word came to be used loosely almost
as a synonym for autobiography without any suggestion of
justifying or defending the writer’s ideas or conduct.
The term comes from the Greek apologia, meaning defense.
This Greek word was formed by joining apo, which means away,
and logia, which means speaking.
Plato recorded Socrates’s Apologia in the Fourth Century B.C.
At the end of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, there is a retrac-
tion or apology for his work; in this case, apology means both an
explanation and an expression of regret.
Arbitrary - lacking any natural basis or substantial justiﬁcation;
determined by whim with little thought.
This term was originally from the Latin arbitrari, derived from
arbitr- or arbiter, meaning “to witness.”
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn contains many instances of
Huck’s arbitrary choice of actions, such as when he chose not to
accept the Widow Douglas’s home as his own, preferring to run
away instead or, as Huck stated in the second paragraph of the
novel, “ . . . when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out.”
Archetype (also called prototype) - the original model or pat-
tern from which copies are made or from which something
develops. It is also a symbol, theme, setting, or character that
is thought to have some universal meaning and recurs in dif-
ferent times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams,
and rituals.
The term is from the Greek archetupon, meaning “pattern” or
“model.”
The psychologist Carl Jung identiﬁed the archetype in the collec-
tive unconscious of mankind: the ideas or modes of thought derived
from the experiences of a race—such as birth, death, love, family
life, struggles—inherited in the subconscious of an individual from
ancestors and expressed in myths, dreams, and literature.
Plato was the ﬁrst philosopher to use archetypes, especially
those of beauty, truth, and goodness. Sophocles used the arche-
types of blindness, patricide, incest, and fratricide. Hawthorne and
Melville focused on the archetypes of sin, retribution, and death
in their works (The Scarlet Letter and Billy Budd, respectively). The
Greek Myth of Pandora introduces the archetype of the mischie-
vous woman, exempliﬁed by Madame Merle in James’s Portrait of
a Lady (1881).
see: folklore, imagery, literature, myth.
Ballad - a short, narrative folk song that ﬁxes on the most dramatic
part of a story, moving to its conclusion by the means of dialogue
and a series of incidences. It represents a type of literary and
musical development across Europe in the late Middle Ages and
tends to have a tight dramatic structure that sometimes omits
all preliminary material, all exposition and description, even
all motivation, to focus on the climactic scene. The narrator
is impersonal and the listener or reader is left to supply the
antecedent material. Folk ballads are transmitted orally, and
therefore, subject to continual change, although most seem to
be domestic, simple, stanzad, rhymed, and use language and
action which are stylized. Clichés and conventionalized con-
duct are typical in ballads which are still common in northern
Greece, parts of the central Balkans, and Sicily. Originally, the
term signiﬁed a song accompanied by a dance. Later, it came to
mean a narrative poem with short stanzas designed for singing
or oral recitation. There are four types of ballads:
1. folk ballad which is derived from the medieval oral tradi-
tions
2. literary ballad which is a deliberate attempt by its author
to capture the charm of the folk ballad
3. broadside ballad which proliferated in the Eighteenth
Century, sold for a penny: printed on sheets of paper called
“broadside,” they included suggestions for the tune to which
they should be sung
4. a sentimental tune with melodramatic lyrics, popular in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
The word comes from the Old French ballade, which derived
from the Provençal ballada. This originated from the Low Latin
ballare, which means “to dance.”
An example of a ballad is “Bill,” which has been sung by sailors
for decades:
He lay dead on the cluttered deck and stared at the cold
skies,
With never a friend to mourn for him nor a hand to close his
eyes:
“Bill, he’s dead,” was all they said; “he’s dead, ’n’ there he
lies.”
The mate came forward at seven bells and spat across the
rail:
“Just lash him up wi’ some holystone in a clout o’ rotten sail,
“’N’, rot ye, get a gait on ye, ye’re slower’n a bloody snail!”
When the rising moon was a copper disc and the sea was a
strip of steel,
We dumped him down to the swaying weeds ten fathom be-
neath the keel.
“It’s rough about Bill,” the fo’c’s’le said, “we’ll have to stand
his wheel.”
see: folklore
Bard - one of an ancient Celtic order of versiﬁers, especially one
who was highly trained as a composer, singer, and harpist who
recited heroic and adventurous poems. This type of versiﬁer
was the oral historian, political critic, eulogizer, and entertainer
of his society. Poems passed from bard to bard orally with each
bard adding some personal embroidery. Their memorization
was aided by certain formulas such as ﬁxed phrases and re-
peated verses or groups of verses. The most prominent bards
lived in medieval and post-medieval Wales and Ireland, many
as residents in wealthy homes, others as itinerants. In Wales,
bards were often nobles and formed guilds to set standards
for writing and reciting. They were repeatedly outlawed by the
English as politically inciting, causing their gradual extinction.
The word is still used to describe a recognized singer at the
Welsh musical festival, Eisteddfod.
The word was taken from the Gaelic and Irish bard or bardh,
approximately meaning “poet,” but speciﬁcally meaning the type
of poet described above.
Now the word is a synonym for poet as in “Shakespeare, the
Bard of Avon.”
Bibliography - a list of readings on a particular subject. Included
in the list are authors, titles, editions, and dates and places of
publication. Bibliographies can be divided into two categories:
the enumerative, which lists alphabetically or chronologically,
and the critical, which lists evaluations or comparisons of the
items. In library science, however, the term means the study of
the history, physical description, and classiﬁcation of books,
graphic materials, etc.
The word is from the Greek bibliographia, meaning “the writ-
ing of books” and was used to describe the writing or copying of
books until the mid-Eighteenth Century.
An example of a bibliography may be found at the end of this
book.
Black comedy - Often considered perverted and morbid, black
comedy depicts situations normally thought of as tragic or
grave as humorous. Speciﬁcally, it displays marked disillusion-
ment and depicts humans without convictions and with little
hope. The term is also used to describe theater dealing with
sinister or disturbing subjects handled lightly in an attempt to
offend and shock, as is common in Theater of the Absurd.
Black is from the Middle English blak derived from the Old
English blaec, which is probably the same as the Latin ﬂagrare,
meaning “to burn.” Comedy is derived from the Latin comoedia
which, in turn, was from the Greek komoidia formed by joining
komos, meaning “revel,” and, aidein, meaning “to sing.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is a Twentieth-Century novelist whose works,
including Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are ﬁlled with black
comedy. There are representatives of the genre in Twentieth Century
drama such as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
see: absurd
Blank verse (also called unrhymed iambic pentameter) - un-
rhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered
syllables bearing the accents. Blank verse is considered best
for dramatic verse in English since it is the verse form closest
to the rhythms of everyday English speech and has been the
dominant verse form of English drama and narrative poetry
since the mid-Sixteenth Century. Such verse is blank in rhyme
only, having a deﬁnite meter, although variations in meter are
sometimes used. As Milton explained in his 1667 preface to
Paradise Lost:
The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as
that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime
being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem
or good Verse, in larger Works especially, but the Inven-
tion of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and
lame Meeter.
The term is originally from the French blanc, meaning
“white”— in the sense of “left white” or “requiring something to
be ﬁlled in.”
The term was ﬁrst used by the Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard,
in 1540 in his translation of Books II and III of The Aeneid of Virgil,
but previously had been adapted by Italian Renaissance writers
from classical sources. It was used a great deal for reﬂective and
narrative poems until the late Seventeenth Century. In the latter
Nineteenth Century, the English romantic poets—Wordsworth,
Shelley, and Keats—made use of blank verse. Later yet, the English
poets, Robert Browning and Lord Tennyson, and the American po-
ets, Robinson and Frost, employed it for less lofty themes, leading
its use to become more colloquial in tone.
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus’s
speech to Hippolyta explaining the lovers’ rearrangement of
couples is written in blank verse:
The poet’s eye, in a ﬁne frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Act V, scene i : lines 12 – 17
Bombast - originally, cotton or any soft material used for padding
to produce clothes in the fashion of the Sixteenth Century. It
has come to mean a highﬂown unnatural style, rather inﬂated
and insincere, pretentious, ranting, and using extravagant
language. Also, it can denote extravagance at the expense of
content.
The word is from the Greek bombux, meaning “silkworm” or
“silk,” and the Latin bombyx, meaning “silkworm,” “something
made of silk, any ﬁne ﬁber, or cotton.” Both were used to form the
Old French bombace, meaning “cotton.”
In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago uses the word in complaining
to Roderigo about Othello:
But he, as loving of his own pride and purposes,
Evades them with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuff’d with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion,
Nonsuits my mediators.
Act I, scene i : lines 13 – 17
see: hyperbole
Canon - a standard of judgment or a criterion. It is also an approved
list of books belonging in the Christian Bible, in addition to
being the accepted list of any given order, and the list of books
accepted as Scripture. The term is increasingly used to refer
to those works of literature that have come to be considered
standard in any anthology or course of study. In addition, it
refers to the works of an author which are accepted as genuine,
such as the Chaucer Canon.
The term is derived from the Middle French canon, which
was adapted from the Italian cannone, meaning “large tube.” This
deﬁnition evolved from the Latin canna, which meant “cane or
reed.” Common usage eventually led to the term being deﬁned as
a straight rod or bar, a carpenter’s rule, or a standard of excellence.
Greek authors were known as kanones or “models of excellence.”
Melville’s canon consists of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd.
Canto - one of the main or larger divisions of a long poem. It is also
used to denote a singing or chanting section of a poem, or a
subdivision of an epic or narrative (comparable to a chapter
in a novel).
The word is taken from the Italian, which originally took it
from the Latin cantus, meaning “song.”
Dante’s The Divine Comedy is divided into cantos.
Catharsis - any emotional discharge which brings about a moral or
spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety.
The usual intent is for an audience to leave feeling this relief
from tension or anxiety after having viewed a play.
The word comes from the Greek katharis, meaning “cleansing,
or puriﬁcation.” This evolved from kathairo, which means I cleanse,
and katharos, which means “pure or clean.”
Catharsis was referred to by Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) in his Poetics:
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious,
complete, and of a certain magnitude; . . . through pity and
fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.
Book 6 : 2
Character - an aggregate of traits and features that form the nature
of some person or animal. It also refers to moral qualities and
ethical standards and principles. In literature, character refers
to a person represented in a story, novel, play, etc.
The word is from the Greek kharakter, meaning “stamp,” and
kharassein, meaning “to engrave.” Originally, the Greek philoso-
pher Theophrastus (372 – 287 B.C.), a pupil of Aristotle’s, used it
in his book Characters which contained short prose sketches of
different types of people molded to a pattern which served as a
model for some Seventeenth-Century writers. In Seventeenth and
Eighteenth-century England, a character was a formal sketch or
descriptive analysis of a particular virtue or vice as represented in
a person, what is now more often called a character sketch.
Chaucer wrote character sketches in the General Prologue to
his The Canterbury Tales.
Characterization - the creation of the image of imaginary persons
in drama, narrative poetry, the novel, and the short story.
Characterization generates plot and is revealed by actions,
speech, thoughts, physical appearance, and the other char-
acters’ thoughts or words about him.
The etymology and derivation of the word are the same as
those for character.
In Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Huck’s use of dialect, run-
ning away, his guardian’s feelings about him, and Jim’s response to
him all comprise Twain’s characterization of his protagonist.
see: allegory, fable, plot, thesis
Chorus - a group of singers distinct from the principal performers
in a dramatic or musical performance and, also, the song or
refrain that they sing.
The word comes from the Greek choros, meaning “a company
of dancers or singers,” or “a group of persons singing in unison.”
In ancient Greece, a chorus was a group of male singers and
dancers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic per-
formances as actors, commenting on the deeds of the characters
and interpreting the signiﬁcance of events within the play for the
audience.
In Aeschylus’s works, the chorus takes part in the action of the
play, while in Sophocles’s, the chorus comments on the action. In
Euripides’s works, the chorus is lyrical. During the Elizabethan
era, a single actor recited both the prologue and the epilogue,
and sometimes commented in-between acts to interpret the
signiﬁcance of events, as in Shakespeare’s Henry V, in which The
Chorus is a character. Contemporarily, the playwrights T. S. Eliot
and Brecht used choruses in their Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948), respectively.
Chronicle (also called history) - a detailed and continuous record
of events, usually a systematic account or narration of events
that contain little or no interpretation or analysis.
The word is from the Greek khronos, meaning “time,” and
khronik, meaning “annals.”
Chronicles were used as a form of history from Roman times
until the early 1600s when they were largely replaced by biogra-
phies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, logs, travel books, and
narratives of sea voyages and exploration.
Shakespeare adapted Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland (1577) for his history plays, such as Henry V.
Climax - the moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem
at which the crisis comes to its point of greatest intensity and is
resolved. It is also the peak of emotional response from a reader
or spectator, and it usually represents the turning point in the
action. Additionally, the term is used for the arrangement of
words, clauses, or sentences in order of their importance, the
least forcible coming ﬁrst and the others rising in power until
the last or, simply, the last term of the arrangement. Climax
also means a culmination.
The word comes from the Greek klimax, meaning “a ladder,”
and klinein, meaning “to slope, or slant.”
The climax of Beowulf is when Beowulf slays the mother
of the monster, Grendel. Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles (1891)
climaxes when Tess murders Alec D’urberville, who has harassed
and tormented her throughout the novel.
see: anticlimax, denouement
Closure - the sense of completion or resolution at the end of a
literary work or part of a work. In literary criticism, it is the
reduction of a work’s meanings to a single and complete sense
that excludes the claims of other interpretations.
The term came from Middle English, which took it from Middle
French, and was originally from the Latin clausura, meaning “to
close.”
An example of closure is the Finale in George Eliot’s Middle-
march in which the author explains what happened to each of the
characters in the novel.
Colloquialism - a word or phrase used in an easy, informal style of
writing or speaking. It is usually more appropriate in speech
than formal writing. Colloquialisms appear often in literature
since they provide a sense of actual conversation and use
the pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary of everyday
speech.
The word is taken from the Latin colloqui, which is a joining
of com, meaning “with or together,” and loqui, meaning “to speak”
and “conversation.”
Mark Twain makes use of colloquialisms in his Huckleberry
Finn, such as in the opening line of the story:
“You don’t know about me without you have read a book
by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that
ain’t no matter.”
see: dialogue, idiom
Comedy - a ludicrous and amusing event or series of events de-
signed to provide enjoyment and produce smiles or laughter
usually written in a light, familiar, bantering, or satirical style.
Comedy is the opposite of tragedy. Dramatic comedy begins in
difﬁculty and rapidly involves its characters in amusing situ-
ations and ends happily, but not all comedies are humorous
and lighthearted. It differs from burlesque and farce in that
comedy has a more closely knit plot, more sensible and intel-
ligent dialogue, and more plausible characterization. Often
comedy assures its desired effect by stressing some oddity
or incongruity of character, speech, or action—perhaps by
caricature or exaggeration. There are many different kinds of
comedy with the most usual being:
1. the comedy of humors in which characters’ actions are
controlled by some whim or humor,
2. the comedy of manners which involves the conventions or
manners of artiﬁcial and sophisticated society, and
3. the comedy of intrigue or situation which depends more
on plot than characterization.
There are also topical, romantic, satirical, and verbal wit
comedies.
The word comes from the French comedie which was derived
from the Greco-Latin comoedia which was formed by combining
komos, meaning “to revel,” and aeidein, meaning “to sing.”
In the Middle Ages, comedy referred to narrative poems that
ended happily, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy (1320). Prior to
that, comedy may be traced as far back as Aristophanes, the Fifth
Century B.C. Greek playwright.
An example of contemporary comedy comes from Faye
Kellerman’s The Quality of Mercy:
“Aye, a strong neck I have. Yet it is neither as long
nor graceful as thine—” He corrected himself. “As
yours. As far as the head is concerned, I’ve been
told I have a head for words, yet not much of one
for numbers and none for science and languages,
as you have. So as far as heads go, you are heads
above me. Which explains why your neck is longer
than mine.”
see: black comedy, comic relief, farce
Comic relief (also called episode and interlude) - a humorous
scene, incident, or remark occurring in the midst of a serious
or tragic literary selection and deliberately designed to relieve
emotional intensity and simultaneously to heighten, increase,
and highlight the seriousness or tragedy of the action. Apart
from being a simple diversion, though, comic relief normally
plays some part in advancing the action of drama.
The phrase comes from two words: the ﬁrst, comic, has the
same etymology as that of comedy which is discussed above; relief
may be traced from Middle English, back to Middle French, and
originally to the Old French relever, meaning “to relieve.”
Since the Sixteenth Century, tragedians have almost uni-
versally used comic relief, as in Shakespeare’s drunken porter in
Macbeth:
Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter
of hell gate, he should have old turning the key.
Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of
Belzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself
on the expectation of plenty. Come in time! Have
napkins enow about you; here you’ll sweat for’t.
Knock, knock! Who’s there, in the other devil’s
name? Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could
swear in both the scales against either scale;
who committed treason enough for God’s sake,
yet could not equivocate to heaven. O, come in,
equivocator! Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there?
Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither for
stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor. Here
you may roast your goose. Knock, knock! Never at
quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for
hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further. I had thought
to have let in some of all professions that go the
primrose way to the everlasting bonﬁre. Anon,
anon! I pray you remember the porter.
Act II, scene iii : lines 1 – 19
see: black comedy, comedy, farce, subplot
Conceit - describing a person or idea by use of an analogy which
often seems farfetched but proves surprisingly apt in pointing
out parallels between the two being compared. A conceit may
be considered an extravagant metaphor making an analogy
between totally dissimilar things.
The word comes from the Latin concipere or conceptum, which
was formed by combining con, meaning “with or together,” and
capere, meaning “to take.” Originally, the word was used to mean
“concept or idea.”
The term has been used since Petrarch (1304 – 1374). The
fanciful images and startling comparisons frequently used in
Elizabethan poetry are conceits. In his sonnets, Shakespeare used
conceits such as:
“So you are to my thoughts as food to life, or as sweet-
season’d showers are to the ground.”
LXXV : lines 1-2
see: analogy, hyperbole, metaphor, oxymoron, paradox
Connotation - suggestions and associations which surround a
word as opposed to its bare, literal meaning. It is the oppo-
site of denotation. Literature uses connotation; science and
philosophy use denotation. Connotation refers to qualities,
attributes, and characteristics implied or suggested by the
word and depends upon the context in which the word is used.
Metaphors depend a great deal on connotation. Connotations
often elicit emotional responses from the reader.
The word is from the Latin connotare, meaning “to mark to-
gether.”
In his love poetry, John Donne often uses the word “die” which
in the Renaissance had a sexual connotation, such as in these lines
from “The Canonization:”
“We die and rise the same and prove mysterious by this
love.”
see: context, device, ﬁgure of speech, metaphor
Content (also called subject matter or substance) - things or sub-
stances in an enclosed space, such as topics, ideas, statements,
or facts in a book, document, letter, etc. This is true not only
of forms, but also thought, feeling, attitude, and intention as
conveyed by the words and their arrangement—especially what
is said, rather than how it is said, in literature and in poetry.
The word is taken directly from the Latin continere, meaning
“to contain.”
Context - the part of a written (or spoken) statement which leads
up to, follows, and speciﬁes the meaning of that statement. The
context of a group of words is nearly always very intimately
connected as to throw light upon not only the meaning of
individual words, but also the sense and purpose of an entire
work.
The term is taken from the Latin contextus which is from con-
texere, meaning “to weave together.”
Understanding the context in which a work of literature was
produced often leads to a deeper understanding of the work itself;
for instance, understanding the social and economic position of
women in the early Nineteenth Century can provide a greater
insight into the characterizations of women in Jane Austen’s nov-
els.
Couplet - a pair of successive lines of verse, especially a pair that
rhymes, that are of the same metrical length, and form a single
unit. The term is also used for lines that express a complete
thought or form a separate stanza. Couplets are usually written
in decasyllabic lines. A closed couplet is one that is logically
and grammatically complete.
The word comes from the French diminutive of couple which
was derived from the Latin copula, meaning “a band or bond.”
The form was ﬁrst used by Chaucer in the Fourteenth Century.
Tudor and Jacobean poets and dramatists used it as a variation of
blank verse and to round off a scene or act. The couplet eventually
evolved into the heroic couplet, which was rhymed iambic pen-
tameter and popular in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Nineteenth-Century Romantic poetry used the couplet, as do
epigrams.
Shakespeare used this form in the concluding lines of his
sonnets. Chaucer used it in his “Merchant’s Tale” within The Can-
terbury Tales:
Whilom ther was dwellynge in Lumbardye
A worthy knyght, that born was of Pavye,
In which he lyved in greet prosperitee;
And sixty yeer a wyﬂees man was hee,
And folwed ay his bodily delyt
On wommen, ther as was his appetyt…
lines 1 – 6
see: epigram, stanza, sonnet